Former Plymouth selectman tells his story

Wednesday

Sep 26, 2007 at 12:01 AMSep 26, 2007 at 1:02 AM

Former Plymouth Selectman Sean Dodgson denied soliciting sex from underage girls Tuesday, testifying he was conducting his own two-pronged investigation of Internet safety when police arrested him in 2006.

The testimony came just one day after undercover officers read transcripts of hours of sexually explicit conversations they had with Dodgson over the Internet while posing as 13-year-old girls from Kingston.

Former Plymouth Selectman Sean Dodgson denied soliciting sex from underage girls Tuesday, testifying he was conducting his own two-pronged investigation of Internet safety when police arrested him in 2006.

Dodgson told jurors his plan might have been stupid, but his motives were good. He said he chanced on the flawed police sting while researching an Internet problem at work and felt a civic obligation to put it to a test.

Dodgson testified he recognized the hand of undercover police almost immediately and feared their tactics bordered on entrapment. He said he engaged in hours of sexually explicit banter and arranged a meeting with two fictitious 13-year-old girls to test both the safety of the Internet and the response of police.

The testimony came just one day after undercover officers read transcripts of hours of sexually explicit conversations they had with Dodgson over the Internet while posing as 13-year-old girls from Kingston.

Under questioning by defense attorney Jack Atwood, Dodgson provided a point-by-point explanation for much of the foul Internet chatter that led to his arrest in July 2006. But Dodgson had no explanation for sending police posing as girls a photograph of an erect penis he initially claimed was his own.

The 47-year-old father of four took the witness stand just after jurors listened to an interview he taped with police July 15, 2006, after his arrest. In both the interview and his testimony, Dodgson maintained he knew he was dealing with police within seconds of stumbling onto their sting.

A West Point graduate who spent 17 years in the Army, Dodgson said he was working as a computer consultant for W.B. Mason at their headquarters in Brockton when he went online June 14, 2006, to research trouble a company executive was having working from home.

Dodgson said he went into a regional Yahoo.com romance chat room looking for help from subscribers from the area who use Verizon after traditional tech sites failed to resolve the problem. He said he was surprised to have stumbled on the sting but knew he was talking with police within three lines and just 21 seconds after his contact, former Deputy Sheriff Melissa Marino, identified herself as a 13-year-old girl from Kingston.

Dodgson told jurors a real 13-year-old would never identify herself like that in an adult chat room. The father of two teenaged girls, Dodgson said he was curious about the controls Yahoo placed on chat room discussions as well as the quality of the police investigation and was looking for peace of mind when he started conversing with Marino.

“My experience with government is they don’t always perform as they claim,” Dodgson said. He testified he’d been critical of State Police operations while attached in the Army to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and felt a need to thoroughly examine the operation because State Police claimed he did not understand their procedures.

He also noted his then-new role as a Plymouth selectman. “I’ve always been civic-minded,” Dodgson said. “I felt as a member of government an extra burden to make sure other government agencies were doing their jobs properly.”

Dodgson pointed to numerous instances where he felt Marino had tipped her hand as a police officer. Some included inconsistencies. Marino, he said, initially wrote that she was poor and lonely but later admitted having her own cell phone and a friend who visited every day. He said she appeared confused about her friends’ hometowns and seemed to be following a script.

Dodgson also questioned Marino’s online and spoken voices.

The real voice sounded too old, Dodgson testified. The online voice was too perfect, writing out words that teens commonly abbreviate and misusing abbreviations she did write. He noted her use of bf, short for boyfriend, instead of bff, short for best friend forever, to describe a teenage girlfriend.

Dodgson raised the issue of entrapment obliquely. He maintained he was not a victim of entrapment, himself, because he knew he was dealing with police, but feared others might have constitutional claims if the police continued to press meetings.

Dodgson told jurors he maintained a sexually explicit conversation with the undercover officers to keep his investigation going and to see if Yahoo would step in and shut him down. He said he finally arranged a meeting with the girls because he wanted to see if police would shift their plans, and he traveled to the rendezvous to check up on the quality of police surveillance.

“I still needed the entire picture,” Dodgson said. “My experience in the past showed I might be shelved because I didn’t have the entire picture.”

Dodgson told jurors he was just trying to cross the busy street to talk to the undercover officers when police spotted him pacing in front of the meeting place. He said he planned to approach the undercover team that night but decided to track down their superiors instead.

Police contacted Dodgson the next day by Internet and telephone and threatened to hunt him down. He said the threat scared him from contacting police and into deleting contacts with the girls from his computer.

Under cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney Mark Dunderdale, Dodgson admitted he used an obscene password to log onto his Yahoo account. He also admitted subscribing to an adult dating site with the profile of a younger single seeking women of any age. Dodgson’s profile sought a fun-loving person interested in making mad love all night.

Dodgson said he inherited the obscene password and a suggestive user name from a former client. He said he subscribed to the dating site to get to the bottom of a junk mail problem at W.B. Mason.

Dodgson admitted he initially told police he was concerned a real girl might be trying to hook up with an older man online for sex. He also admitted sending the obscene photo and telling the 13-year-old it was for her.

Final arguments are scheduled to begin Wednesday morning after two of Dodgson’s friends testify as character witnesses. Jury deliberations are expected to start later in the day after final instructions from Judge Elizabeth Donovan.

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